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I’m almost scared to do so but I really, desperately want to scream out praise for Dena Higley and Josh Griffith from the highest of highs. Two and a half weeks have flown by since their tales began to play on our screens and in two and a half weeks, Salem has gone from just a drab set to a living, breathing town again. Days of Our Lives has been resurrected and we could not be more happy!
The beauty is in the details and no one seems to be missing any of those lately; from little nuances in the extended scene lengths like characters gazing off in the distance to something as simple as having extras in the backgrounds of all scenes, Salem has really come back to life. I don’t want to gush too much, I’m too afraid to jinx this peak that the show is steadily climbing toward, and a lot did happen on Days of Our Lives this last week. So let’s keep it on the shorter side and deal with the highlights.
As usual, if I missed something you really wanted to talk about or if I missed something important in my recap, let’s start a discussion. Comment, tweet me, let’s chat! Now onto what went down in Salem, USA this last week.
Week in Review for Days of Our Lives episodes airing August 24-28, 2015.
Salem’s Dark Knight
No, Chad Dimera isn’t running around Horton Town Square in tights and a mask but he’s sure as hell playing the anti-hero role like Salem’s own private Batman. Maybe he’s playing a dual role as a murderer too? We’ll get to that in a bit. Obviously Chad was not having his greatest of weeks and though we all love him (seriously, soap fans are becoming more and more infatuated with both the character and his portrayer, Billy Flynn), we love to see him tortured. What’s a lovesick puppy without the sick part?
As he has been for a few weeks now, Stefano Dimera has been pushing his last remaining child to go after the love of his life, Abigail Devereaux. We’re all still unsure if The Phoenix really just wants his son to be happy or if he solely desires the hunk of fertile land Abigail is set to inherit in Ireland. When it’s Stefano, motives can change on a whim – not to mention when new head writers take the reins of a show, the story itself might change altogether. I know for sure that I had been expecting more than a few weeks of propping up this inheritance story, ultimately meaning more pushing from Stefano, so to see it all come crashing down so soon was a bit of a shock to me. It all happened after Abigail and Ben Weston had shared a morning that actually made them feel like a couple for once. There was cute banter over pancakes that came to an abrupt halt when Abigail lied her way out of the apartment, going to meet Chad instead of going to work as she’d said. Good thing creepy Ben was on the case, still stalking her through the app he implanted on her phone.
From what I can assume, Chad seemed to be fed up with his father continuing to push him toward Abigail. She’d made her decision and Chad, wanting to be respectful, had promised to let her hold herself to it. Abigail was pregnant and marrying Ben, that was that. So after calling her over to the mansion, Chad laid every plan out on the table for her, informing Abigail of her coming inheritance and his father’s greedy intentions. To say the least, the revelation does not go well and not only is Chad kicked out but he’s disowned, Stefano going so far as to call his last living child a disgrace. The last time Stefano disowned a child, he wound up dead in the end – this time seems to be working the opposite way. An uncertain Chad meets up with Serena Mason at Club TBD, they’re both having awful days and decide to drink together. Serena had just learned that though Eric Brady forgave her, he’d never love her again. Together they drink their sorrows, getting rowdier by the minute. Serena makes a move to leave but Chad wants to keep playing and forces a kiss on her. The last time anyone sees Serena alive is when she slaps Chad. The next morning, she’s dead in the bushes.
No matter how little I cared for the character, seeing her lifeless body with the offending necktie around her neck and eyes wide open in shock was unsettling. Yet somehow beautiful in its execution. Now DAYS is no Hannibal, but the murder scene was intricate enough to make the viewers pay attention. Could the tie be Chad’s? Is there significance to the flowers around her body? While everyone was wondering why or how this could happen, Eric Brady was the only one who truly cared that she was dead and Chad could not remember anything after he slapped her. Except that he’d followed behind Serena, upset. In a set of amazingly crafted scenes, we see Chad fretting in his darkened hotel room, flashbacks plaguing him but nothing giving him a definitive answer on what he may have done. All of this nags at him as he’s on his way to pick up his things from the mansion, running into Abigail soon. By now everyone in Salem knows that Serena had been murdered and since Clyde and Ben Weston had been openly spying on Chad and her at the club, they’d filled Abigail in on their suspicions of her ex. I really love that Abigail stood up for Chad both to her future father-in-law and husband but when she was with Chad too. Neither of them is fooling the other anymore, they know there are feelings there but acting on them just isn’t in the cards for now. Oh, the pain.
Chad reassures Abigail of his involvement in the crime though he’s probably not so sure himself then heads to go get his things from his father’s place. Newly reinstated Detective Rafe Hernandez interrupts Chad’s chat with a heartbroken Stefano, wanting to bring Chad in for questioning on the murder. So it begins. Innocent or not, watching Chad suffer will be absolutely entertaining – and not because he necessarily deserves it, but because Billy Flynn will act his ass off doing it. When the storyline was pitched and Chad was tossed in as the main suspect, the writers knew what they were doing giving him this major material, they knew he could take the story and make it the anguish and confusion convincing. If those hotel room scenes were just a teaser of what’s to come, then Chad and Billy Flynn will surely be taking us on an unforgettable ride. Plus, Chad’s just somehow cuter when he’s suffering. What’s that all about?
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